The Fig Cafe

The last round in my Sunday evening posting blitzkrieg:

Another gorgeous day to be in Sonoma. It was sunny and probably in the mid-70s today, but to this city mouse it felt like blazing 80 degree heat. I basked in it and enjoyed it, knowing the sunshine here is always likely to end before I've gotten enough.

I love that Fig Cafe feels the need to apologize for only allowing their guests to drink one bottle of wine per meal--per person. Ah, Sonoma!

I was promised that the bellini would be out of this world, but I really regret not getting the fig royale instead. The peach flavor was mediocre, not like the legendary Venetian bellinis you hear about that make you glad to be alive. The stamp and design on the tables were a cute touch.

Fig and apple bread pudding came in lieu of the usual bread and butter. I liked it: soft, warm, moist, and not too sweet. A great breakfast bread. Now that I typed that, I realize it's true: this was more of a breakfast bread than a pudding.

Tart du jour: a classic French quiche with gruyere, ham, and leeks. I thought this was a very stingy portion for a $10 quiche: three-quarters of an inch thick, and about the size of a 3x5 card. C'mon, at Tartine you can get a three inch tall quiche for $3 and it's almost enough food for 2 people! Granted, this quiche came with a salad, but really. Poor JC was still hungry!

Omlette du jour: three eggs, bacon, spinach, and a little cheese. The heartiest dish of the day, but reportedly not very fluffy. Then again, Wung's comparing to the Wynn in Vegas, which is hardly fair. That omlette probably cost an arm and a leg.

Being his hungry self, Wung ordered a side of apple-smoked sausage. The consensus was that this is strange. The first bite reminded us of Chinese sweet sausage, and the other herbs and smoke comes in later. But ultimately, it's a little dry on the inside, a little cold, and not well charred on the outside.

If there's something Californian restaurants know, it's salad. The boys both had great green salads as side dishes, and I just went ahead and ordered an entree salad because I was pretty sure I'd love it. Butterleaf lettuce with slices of grapefruit and an entire sliced avocado. Everything was just perfect, and the sauce was light enough that even though the salad was over dressed for my taste it was not too salty or tangy.

Overall: The Fig Cafe is an adorable little restaurant with beautiful food. It's not a bad value compared to the brunchy spots right in Sonoma/Glen Ellen, but in typical Sonoma fashion the food's a bit precious. But I really wish I could find a low brow diner-style place where we could fill up on decent good food like burgers and shakes for under $10, but we don't go enough to sniff out the neighborhood spots.

We hit a few new wineries today in addition to our usual Benziger stop:

St. Francis: loved both zinfandels on the list. Fantastic, smooth, fruity, easy to drink big wines. Wung liked the cabernet franc as well. I liked it, but found it a bit musty to drink alone. Cute winery with super nice staff. The tasting room looks very new and chic, prompting me to note that St. Francis has a "Mini Mondavi" look about it.

Blackstone: didn't see anything on the list that called to us, but there's a nice outdoor area where people had brought their own food to eat, and there's an outdoor tasting bar as well.

Kenwood: the big surprise of the day. Decent $7 table wine! I mean really and truly decent. Nice ruby color, easy to drink blend of grapes, reasonably dry but still very fruity. Just good. The $5 white wasn't half bad either, and the $14 Gewurztraminer smelled deliciously fruity while tasting dry. I'm very glad we stopped by. Kenwood is such a big name and the place is so crowded that I wasn't expecting much, but this is one of the few places offering free tastings where I've been impressed. Definitely worth a stop to look for every day table wine.

The Fig Cafe Website

Wung-B-Que

What does an engineer buy himself to celebrate a quarter century on this planet?

A smoker, of course! This is the Lazy-Q, the busy man's solution to all his smoking problems. The chimney on the right holds wood chips formed into pucks, and the smoker automatically feeds a new puck into the smoker every 20 minutes. Set it, and forget it! The Lazy-Q enables the home smoker to simultaneously smoke meat and accomplish tasks like cooking habanero BBQ sauce in the kitchen (aka. Death Sauce), pick up his dearest friend Pei from the Caltrain station, and play catch with his less dear friends (aka. boys).

Brisket and ribs were dry rubbed, refrigerated overnight (I assume), and smoked at 200 degrees for 10 hours, at which point everyone wanted to eat. The ones that came out after 11 hours were far superior. We're thinking next time fifteen hours at 150 would be even better.

Beef....

...and more beef!!

What birthday is complete without a cake and some strawberries? These genetically engineered beauties were sweeter than anything I've tasted in a long time. The cake, from Sheng Kee, was layers of mango mousse, white cake, raspberry mouse, and chocolate cake. It sounds like too many flavors, but it worked really well. Light, fluffy, and nice after a meal of nothing but meat (and a salad that JC snuck into Wung's kitchen, and for which I whipped up a vinaigrette). Go team salad!

Helmand

Short version: Helmand's appetizers are stunningly delicious, have surprising flavor combinations, and I could eat a whole table of them and be very happy with my meal. Their entrees are just okay, fine but not unique, and some of them start tasting the same after awhile.

Warm flatbread: soft on the inside, crispy on the outside. The three sauces were all wonderful, but the herby green one was the table favorite. The red one was a spicy chili sauce with black sesame seeds in it, and the white was a yogurt sauce.

Mmmmm, ravioli-like things filled with spinach and topped with both yogurt and meat sauces.

Both kinds of dumplings above totally blew me away.

Pumpkin! This is Helmand's most famous dish. When I saw it, I was disappointed. Steamed pumpkin, what's so special about that? One bite had me going back for more. The flavors, the accompanying sauce, the meat, the yogurt...it just all comes together somehow.

My beef with pallow (fragrant rice cooked with cumin and other herbs): the meat was overcooked. I was very sad. Meat like this is the reason I avoid kebab-like meat in most restaurants. The flavor was there, the char was nice, but it was so tough! The rice was good but not phenomenal, and the chickpeas were fine as well. What I really enjoyed was the grilled pear that came with a lof of the dishes.

Grilled lamb: much better than my beef.

Beef meatballs in sauce: I actually never saw this dish, but the rumor was it wasn't great.

Lamb special: this was the one dish that really did wow me. I was sad I hadn't orded it for myself. Very tender meat, a sauce that didn't taste like any of the other sauces at the table, and good flavor penetration.

Tenderloin steak: much better than my grilled beef. Rare in the center and tender. However, it was just a steak, and I could grill a tastier steak at home without much effort. The spinach rice did look delicious, though, and with all the little side vegetables this would have been something I could eat a whole plate of. Contrast with my beef, which was so tough it went around the table twice for tasting and I still had half to take home.

Grilled salmon: good fish, not overcooked. But again, just fish.

Fish: as usual, there was one dish I forgot to photograph. It was pretty good, actually. But again, the sauces start tasting the same after awhile.

Korean Grocery Raid

My thirst for blood continues un-checked.

First it was the rare burgers. Now I've moved on to just plain blood. I went to buy some kimchi and raw spinach to eat with turkey porridge, but spied some sausage-like objects at the checkout stand. And you know how much I love sausage. I asked the little old man at the cashier if it was blood sausage, and he said the key words "Yes," "Very good," and "Home made." I was sold.

They're very garlicky, not too salty, and the potential for blood sausage to be crumbly and dry is mitigated by the nicely cooked rice throughout. The casing had a nice snap to it as well. It was a lot less dense than Chinese rice blood sausage, but equally effective at satisfying bloodlust. The accompanying salt is a mixture of salt, sesame seeds, and ground Korean chili flakes. In addition to adding flavor, the salt has a nice crunch. I like.

The two kimchis I got today were a standard house made napa cabbage kimchi from the store and a baby daikon kimchi from a company called Chongga. The store, on Fillmore just off Geary, is one of the few Korean markets in SF and makes very respectable if not amazing kimchi. As for the other, I've always been wary of commercial kimchi, but I have it on Korean authority that Chongga isn't half bad. We'll see.

Pearl's Deluxe Burgers (aka. Pearl's Phatburger)

The tears of joy coursing down my cheeks are preventing me from typing a proper ode to Pearl's. I'm going to go cuddle with my vanilla malted shake and leave you to drool over this photo. I'll type up a report after I recover.

Three hours and a buffalo cheeseburger later...

I almost ran back across the street for another one after I scarfed down the first. Then again, I can't remember the last time I had red meat, and I ran today, so maybe I was just feeling anemic. Still, this is one of the better burgers I've had in SF, not counting fancy restaurant burgers that cost $15. The buffalo cheeseburger was $7, a regular cheeseburger is a few dollars less.

Look at all that pink! The plusses: the meat was lean, flavorful, and cooked medium rare on the rare side. It had a hint of that gamey buffalo flavor, but it was similar enough to regular beef that I'll just order regular beef next time (see bonus round for statement retraction). It was nicely cooked, with a little bit of char and that buttery aftertaste that a great burger gets from its fat content. I just wanted a classic burger this time, and the lettuce and tomatoes were both cold and crispy.

The minuses: The onions could have been grilled a little longer (I like my char), and the burger could have used more salt. I solved the second problem by adding ketchup and eating a lot of pickles, but a very light sprinkling of salt over the patty would have been ideal. Still, I much prefer for a restaurant to undersalt than oversalt. This burger has great potential, and I'm willing to cut them some slack in their first weeks.

I love that there's finally a no frills diner in the neighborhood. This is the kind of food people want in the Sirloin (aka. Tendernob). You can get a full meal for under $10, or a light meal for under $5. It's the kind of food that makes you feel like a kid again, the kind that's conducive to sharing with friends and making a big mess. Lovable, familiar, back to basics food. Oh, and they let you have as many pickles as you want. Take the time to pick and choose; one of mine was crispy and the other was limp.

I do have to go back and explore the menu. So many delicious things, including a dish called frings. That's right, someone finally realized that people often want fries AND onion rings on the same plate, but don't always want two orders of deep fried snacks.

Bonus round...

Yes, I was back the next day for fries and a Fat Bob. Bacon, onion rings, Monterey Jack, and BBQ sauce on top of a beef patty. I rescind my previous statement: the buffalo tastes way better than the beef. I guess I never noticed because I've never done a side by side comparison, but buffalo tastes beefier. Not gamey, per se, just beefy. Still, this was a well made burger--like a Bacon Western Cheeseburger that tastes like real food. The fries were hot, crispy, and of the variety that has much more soft center than crispy crust. Again, I love this thickness for fries. I was really impressed by the length of these fries. There were only a handful that were shorter than my longest finger, and many that were a good four inches long.

A note on ordering: do insist on your meat being rare or medium rare if that's what you want. They're not squeamish about giving you what you want. I wasn't careful about ordering today and the meat was barely pink in the center. Yesterday I was very insistent about my meat not being overcooked, and it came out deliciously pink/almost raw.

Pearl's Deluxe Burgers
Post, between Leavenworth and Jones
Website

Fish Fried Rice

I promised myself I'd finish some of the leftovers in my fridge today, so even though I was feeling under the weather I forced myself to come home and cook. Besides, I knew a simple home cooked meal would make me feel much better than anything in a restaurant, and it wouldn't require talking to people. Not in a people mood. Not at all.

I cooked some rice, set a small pot of water on simmer with a lot of sliced ginger, washed some baby bok choy, and stir fried the vegetables with some ginger and leftover pan fried catfish. It looked good and smelled fine, but I didn't want to eat it. Looking at it sitting in the wok left me feeling bored and uninspired. So I covered it and took a two hour nap. When I went back to the kitchen, I realized that what I wanted was fried rice. I heated the fish and vegetables back up, picked out the ginger, added the rice with a splash of soy sauce, and scrambled an egg into it. Suddenly I had a meal I wanted to eat.

Confession: I compulsively mash food together. I'm the one you don't want to share Chinese shaved ice with because I'll mush it all together before digging in. I'm the one who stirs her oatmeal a hundred times even though it's already a homogenous mass. I don't know that I think all this mushing makes things taste better; I just can't control myself. I usually catch myself stirring gravy into mashed potatoes and have to force myself to stop because even I don't think it tastes better that way. So yes, mashing all the food into one plate somehow comforted me and made the whole thing easier to eat.

To explain the ginger water: ginger tea! A must when one's feeling down. All you do is simmer the heck out of some slices of ginger, then add sugar (I like brown or rock sugar). It's better to make the ginger tea too strong and add water later rather than to make listless ginger tea and have to boil it way down to get flavor. The tea also tastes better after it's had some time to mellow. I like to simmer for half an hour, let it cool down, then reheat.

So comforting. I feel almost as good as new.

Spam Musubi

Aloha! I had nori, I had rice, and I had an intense craving for spam musubi after dinner at C's last night. A quick trip to the store and I had the necessary can of Spam to complete the project.

Rough rundown:

• nori (seaweed)
• 1 cup uncooked sushi rice (short grain Japanese rice, cooked with a teaspoon or so of white vinegar)
• 1/2 tablespoon of sesame oil
• 1 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sake
• 1 tablespoon sugar (white or brown)

Start cooking the rice.

Slice the Spam into 1/8 inch thick slices. What I do is stand the Spam up straight (the same way it stands upright in the can) and cut vertical slices. Mix the soy sauce, sesame oil, sake, and sugar together. Hm, I guess you could refer to those as the Four Ss. Soak the Spam slices in the sauce while you wait for the rice to finish cooking. I actually didn't have sake or Chinese rice wine, so I used Bacardi Gold. Inauthentic, you cry! Shut up, I say! It tasted d***ed good to me! Go somewhere else for your authentic recipe for fake sushi.

When the rice is done, start frying the Spam. Just make sure they're a little charred and brown on both sides, then put them back in the sauce. Remember, Spam's already cooked so it's fine to put it back in the sauce.

Mix up the rice and let it cool down until you can handle it with your bare hands. If you're getting fancy, put some Furikake in the rice. Meanwhile, cut the nori into thirds (or long strips roughly the width of the Spam).

With slightly wet hands, make oblong balls of rice and pack it together so the rice sticks. If you like things salty, you can sprinkle some salt on your hands at this point. I find the extra salt a bit much.

You'll need to judge how to wrap your musubi depending on how long your nori is. I left about an inch and a half at the end. Put the rice ball on the nori, cover with a slice of Spam, and roll up. You can seal the end with a wet finger, but the rice and spam are hot/wet, so if you just set it seam side down the steam will seal the musubi. When you've finished making a plate of them, you can cover it with plastic wrap so the musubi will sweat a bit and make the seaweed nice and soft.

Thank you!

People who cook me dinner always deserve to be mentioned on Chezpei.

C and her friend cooked up a fantastic pot of oden tonight. Oden is Japanese hot pot made with kombu (seaweed) stock, a variety of fish cakes, tofu, noodles, hard boiled eggs, and a variety of other goodies. Like most hot pots, there's a sort of "anything goes" mentality. Tonight the things I liked best were a shark's fish cake (huge slabs of very tender, almost tofu-like cakes) and a little tofu skin pouch filled with mochi. I really regret not getting a good photo of that. Photo skills were definitely left at the door today. I was just so grateful to have a lovely, warm home-cooked meal made by someone else. Yummmm. C's friends know their Japanese food, and a huge bottle of great sake was on hand. I've never cared for sake, but tonight's bottle was clean, crisp, creamy, and delicious chilled. It really completed the oden experience.

A few hours after the oden, someone came up with the brilliant idea of making spam musubi. So the Hawaiian in the room took charge and showed us all how it's done on the islands. Aren't they cute? In another instance of "Why is San Francisco itty bitty," C's friend the musubi master turned out to be Chowhound sushi fiend umetaro. Even when I don't go to Chowdowns I meet up with Chowhounds.

Less exciting was a bowl of udon I had earlier today at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown. Almost everything about it was fine: clear broth, not too much sauce, nice flavors, decent toppings. But the udon! Oh, the horrible, horrible udon! It was too dense, lacked spring, and had been over-cooked. I was saddened, especially because fair food is supposed to make one very happy. Oh well.

Mission District Afternoon

I was a busy bee today, cycling through one group of friends and then another from noon until the wee hours of the night. There's no place like the beginning, so...

Ritual Roasters. Started off the morning with a few Chowhounds who converged on Ritual Roasters for a cuppa and some chatting. This is a photo from a previous trip, but the latte art is as beautiful as ever. This is still the best consistently excellent cappucino in San Francisco. Massimo Lounge is the only other place I can think of that consistently makes me sigh with relief and delight upon first sip. I had a mind-blowing, gasp-inducing, life-changing foam once at Cafe Rulli, but only once and never again. Ritual Roasters if always excellent if not revelatory. I also had some gingerbread today (purchased from a bakery), and enjoyed it. It was a very dense, moist, flavorful cake with plenty of ginger flavor. However, it was much too dense for me to finish and I with they'd sell just half a slice.

After some shopping and friend shuffling, I ended up with L and C at the St. Francis Fountain Shop. I had never had anything but ice cream here, and was pleasantly surprised by all the food. And look how cute the menu is: "The St. Francis Fountain is a cell phone friendly restaurant. As long as you don't use them in the restaurant, we'll be friendly." I politely kept my cell phone usage outdoors. They kept their promise: all our servers were very friendly.

French fries: when are fries bad? This style of french fry cut is my favorite. I like the skin on, and I like this thickness. The fries were on the soft side, but they were hot and soft. We managed to polish off this plate pretty quickly. We should have regretted it later when we weren't able to finish our entrees, but I didn't hear anyone complaining. A plate of fries and a table of girls? Fries beware.

Biscuits and gravy: the biscuits were too dense, but that's some good sausage gravy. I'm a gravy fiend, but even L who doesn't like creamy milky things liked this sausage gravy. At $3, this might be the best bargain meal on the menu.

Bacon, chives, and cheddar pancakes: Amazing! They were good on their own, but came to life with maple syrup. I would never in a million years have thought to pour maple syrup on something so savory, but for reasons beyond my ken the flavors in this just make sweet sweet music together.

Guacamole, tomato, sour cream omlette: This is one of the best guacs I've had in San Franisco. It was tasty enough to make me long for the guacs of LA. The eggs were super fluffy, the salsa was fresh and tasty despite it not being tomato season, and the English muffins were like crumpets (not just like boring Thomas's English muffins). The potatoes were average.

Chef's mess: true to reputation, this little bit of everything scrambled into one mass was stellar. And, uh, I love sour cream? The cornbread was soft and hot, and the butter smelled great. I preferred the omlette ever so slightly, however, and felt that having both of these egg dishes was redundant. I wouldn't order both for a table of food sharers, though both are great.

We, unfortunately, left no room for dessert. Otherwise we were going to try the Guiness float. C'est la vie when you're greedy and don't have a fourth person to share. Next time!

This is how we felt after we finished eating: "Help me, I'm sooooooooo full!!" This was actually a little present from whoever sat at the table before we did. Funny, no? Stuffed to the gills, we waddled through the Mission. All of us were half asleep at this point, and somehow decided we needed coffee to wake us up.

A short walk through the mural alley...

and we ended up at Philz.

Having coffee like Philz, if you happen to get served by Phil himeslf, is like taking a trip to a three-ring circus run by a madman. There can be no doubt that Phil is passionate about his coffee. His shop is a mad scientist's dream; a motley assortment of old furniture and ancient machines, with about two dozen custom blends of coffee created and whimsically named by a coffee mastermind (the Philharmonic, Turkish Delight, and Philz Dream are just a few). And true to mad scientist form, Phil will serve you what he wants when he wants. L unwittingly engaged Phil in a long conversation about the perfect cappuccino, which sent Phil into a frenzy making cup after cup of black coffee for us to sample, all the while building up to creating the perfect capp for L. To make a long story short, L got a great cup of coffee that was nothing like the cappuccino she described. Oh well. Phil's shop, Phil's rules. While all this hubbub was going on, C tried to order a mocha from a nice lady who was on staff, but Phil declared that he would be the one making her mocha and that she was to immediately relinquish the one she had been served by someone else: "Who made this? Who made this? I make you one myself--you will love." Then he gave her both the original and the new and improved cups. Flabbergasted, I made a final attempt to rein Phil in: I clearly stated that I wanted a cup of iced coffee with cream and cardamom. Wonder of wonders, I got exactly what I wanted. I counted my blessings. While paying, we were handed a baklava each because Phil said he had to get rid of them before he ate them all himself. So yes, he is a benevolent dictator, a charming older man, and brilliant coffee blender. We lovingly dubbed him the coffee Nazi as we beat a hasty retreat to a bench outside the shop to drink our bazillion cups of coffee.

Did you keep count? This is what the three of us ended up with, minus the cup that I finished and tossed before remembering the camera. There was also two other baklava. Yup. This is what we got after ordering three cups of coffee. Chaotic? Yes. Delicious? Always. Fun? Absolutely.

We ended our Mission crawl with a trip to Dianda's for rum cake to go. I, bad person that I am, forgot to photograph the rum cake, chocolate rum cake, and mille feuille. The rum cakes were moist and rum-arrific, the kind of cake that oozes a light taste of rum with every bite. The perfect end to a lovely day inn one of SF's best food 'hoods.

The rest of the day was slightly less food related and involved another friend switcheroo. a bunch of goofballs came over to my place and we gathered together some takeout from Tajine, Shalimar, and Bang San Thai. Food from these divey spots was as fantastic as always, and we finished with the cakes from Dianda. Stuffed to the gills, we goofed off and watched music videos for a few hours before heading off to a birthday party and dancing the night away.

The End.

Dottie's True Blue Cafe

This is pretty belated, but breakfast at Dottie's always deserves a mention. I always manage to go a few months without stopping in, but every time I get up early enough to go I leave the restaurant wondering why I don't do it more often.

First of all, Dottie's decor is hysterical. Art deco posters, tabletops covered with giant glamor shots of Fitzgerald-era songbirds, and kitschy salt and pepper shakers from around the world.

My favorite dish is black beans, but I've been on a "try something new" kick so I opted for the fennel sausage, mushroom, and spinach hash with a side of potatoes. Good, but not as good as the black bean cakes. The fennel flavor came through fully in the sausage, but had been cooked enough to taste sweet with a slight bite instead of strongly of licorice.

My lovely dining companion had a three stack of cinnamon pancakes and fruit, drenched in pure warm maple syrup and sprinkled with sugar.

Ultimately, Dottie's remains one of the premier breakfast destinations in San Francisco for a reason. The fruit's not organic, there's no Plugra butter, the coffee's not especially blended just for the restaurant, bla bla bla. No one cares. It's damned good food whipped up in a divey neighborhood restaurant by a one man cooking machine, served by sassy brassy servers who will flirt with you, ignore you, compliment you, insult you, rush you, and make you feel at home all in the same meal. What they do have is a menu of breakfast staples, a whiteboard of ever changing breakfast specials, and a chalkboard of fresh house baked pastries. The flurry of confusion is purely a bonus.

Sitting at the bar and watching the cook/owner in action or watching the Tenderloin go by while sipping a bottomless mug of mellow black coffee remains a quintessentially San Franciscan way to start the morning. I wonder why I don't do it more often? (See what I mean?)

Dottie's True Blue Cafe
Jones, between Geary and O'Farrell
Breakfast and lunch, Closed on Wednesdays

Turkey Fried Rice

Yup, I'm still eating turkey.

Fried rice is one of the first things a Chinese kid is taught how to cook. Not knowing how to fry up some rice is like being American and not knowing how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Okay, it's not that easy, but you get the idea. Fried rice is the default dish we make when we have cold rice, eggs, onions, and some other things to get rid of. Don't try it without those three ingredients, though, because they are key. Below is what I made with roughly three cups of cooked rice, one cup of vegetables, and four eggs. You can decide what ratio you like, or just use whatever you have on hand. Remember to salt at each step, not all at the end.

Step 1: scramble the eggs until they are fluffy but still quite runny. Remember to salt the eggs. Set aside and get your wok to hot hot hot!

Step 2: stir fry diced onions, carrots, peas, and whatever other vegetables you're using. Remember to add a pinch of salt.

Step 3: when the vegetables are soft, throw in any meat you want. I usually have some Chinese sausage in the freezer, but Chinese BBQ, ham, Spam, cooked fish, ground meat, and shredded meat all work. You shouldn't need more salt at this point.

Step 4: add in cold rice. You'll want to use wet fingers to break up all the rice before you do this, so that you can just pour the cold loose rice into the wok. Toss the rice with the vegetables so that all the rice is evenly coated in oil. Sprinkle in about a teaspoon of soy sauce and toss immediately so that the soy sauce evenly coats the rice. If a little rice sticks to the bottom, don't stress it. After you turn off your stove and leave it awhile, the rice will loosen up. It might or might not be a be a bit crunchy, which I actually like.

Taste, and adjust for seasoning. At this point I usually add salt and not soy sauce, because I don't like my rice to get very dark (it's ugly!). A dash of hondashi is nice if you have fish in your fried rice, and a drizzle of sesame oil is always nice.

I sprinkle liberally with white pepper and chopped green onions before serving.

Da Flora

Dinner at Da Flora on the 100th anniversary of the Great Quake of 1906 turned out to be something to remember. Coincidentally, HAPPY BIRTHDAY LILY!!! My darling sister has turned the big TWO-OH.

Gorgeous dining room, fun staff, and fantastic company as always.

A Chowhound is always ready to further her knowledge of the fine wines of the world. Thank you to the bearer of this indescribably fantastic amarone. Words cannot describe what a joy it was to partake in this bottle. In the corner the menu says "Tonight, we dine in memory of..."

"...The great earthquake of 1906...Let's pretend it's 1906--no cell phones, no credit cards!" Menu items included throwbacks to a San Francisco of days gone by as well as classic dishes that are still city favorites.

This bears repeating: a Chowhound is always willing to further her knowledge of fine wines of the world. Our prosecco came in a gorgeous pink bottle. As we placed our orders and the sun quickly set over Coit Tower, Da Flora became a cozy cave awash in old world charm and candlelight. It was utterly impossible to take pictures without flash, so please excuse the less artistic photos going forward.

Appetizers: half a dozen oysters (just okay, a bit fishy), fava bean crostini (amazing, flavorful, creamy, with great olive oil), and asparagus with egg salad and vinaigrette (I've really had an aversion for eggs lately, but that vinaigrette was phenomenal).

The Earthquake Kit (a little of every essential, eh?): pasta with anchovies, caramelized onions, parsley, etc. I really liked this. Some thought the onions were too sweet, but I thought it went very well with the fishiness.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi: close to perfect, even though I've decided I'm not gnocchi's biggest fan. These puppies held their shape even though they were light and fluffy in the middle. Perfectly charred on both sides, they came in a creamy but not too heavy sauce. I didn't get any pancetta, but I did inadvertently steal the lion's share of the gnocchi.

Petrale Sole: the fish was great. Petrale sole is almost always a winner in San Francisco restaurants. Perfectly grilled on both sides, crispy, soft and tender in the center. Some of the artichokes served with this dish were too hard to eat. That and the fishy oysters were to me the biggest missteps in terms of food tonight.

Where's the osso bucco? I'll post that photo later. I liked it. It could have been even more tender, but the flavor was good and the marrow was yummy. The bed of risotto under it was fine, but not great. Best risotto award still belongs to Pesce's squid ink risotto.

Pistachio cake with vanilla cream. Simple, good, nothing to write home about. Overall, I think Da Flora is one of the best places to eat in North Beach. The prices are the same as all the tourist traps, it's a little off the beaten path, it has more character than most North Beach restaurants, and there isn't some obnoxious person standing outside assaulting passerbys so they'll come in for dinner. But if you throw in price considerations, Il Borgo still has the best package for homey Italian meals in SF.